When you consider it's a ridiculously common act that sustains industries, it's not surprising that there are many different ways to masturbate. This is true for men at least; I can't speak from any informed perspective, but I imagine it's the same for women too. I'm not naive enough to think Ann Summers profits from selling elaborate cake-mix stirrers. But by necessity, assume I'm speaking from the male perspective from this point on.

These masturbation techniques are typically passed around by teenage boys in the midst of the hormonal storms of puberty, like some sort of memetic contraband. Some of these techniques can be quite elaborate and far-fetched, which can result in someone ending up in, at best, a stand-up routine; at worst, A&E.

One such technique is "the stranger", which is mentioned regularly in sitcoms. It involves the self-indulger making their arm go numb, then using said numbed limb to masturbate with. With no feeling in the arm, it supposedly feels like someone else is doing it.

I've honestly never tried this, and don't know anyone who has (that they'll admit). It seems ridiculous though, for several reasons.

Firstly, the lack of feeling in your arm is due to compressing nerves and blood vessels, scrambling nerve signals and blood supply to said nerves. I've had a numb arm before (for unrelated reasons) and I can envisage many logistical problems with trying to use it for such an act. Firstly, it's a weird, uncomfortable sensation (what with the heat/pain conducting nerves being the first to recover, hence the prickly, burning sensation that can be experienced). I can't imagine maintaining arousal in such a state, but maybe that's just me?

Secondly, when I have a numb limb, I can't do much with it. What with nerve signals being scrambled, fine motor control and proprioception (awareness of where your body is and what it's doing) are reduced. Self manipulation must be a tricky prospect when your arm has lost all feeling.

You know what would also be hard to manipulate? Belt buckles, buttons and the like. These things you have to deal with at some point during the masturbation process. The obvious solution would be to remove your garments before numbing your arm, but this would add an extra hazard to getting caught; if someone enters unannounced and catches you masturbating, sure it's embarrassing, but it's not something that needs explaining. But if said person were to find you naked from the waist down and sitting on your hand, that's a scenario that will need some elaborating.

And lastly, the reason I think this method wouldn't work (if there's anyone left who believes I haven't tried it given how much I've talked about it), is that I'm not that gullible. Just because my arm is numb doesn't mean I would assume it's someone else's. The impulses controlling it are still coming from my own brain, and that would surely ruin the illusion. There may be ways round this. Perhaps you could give yourself alien hand syndrome, and hope your now-independent limb feels frisky at the required time. But deliberately severing your corpus callosum seems like an extreme length to go to for momentary self-gratification.

And even if you were able to convince yourself that your limb is not your own, that doesn't mean your senses stop functioning. You're then in a situation where your genitals are being manipulated by an undetectable presence, like an overly friendly ghost. And when I think of friendly ghosts, I immediately think of Casper. And if there's anyone you shouldn't think about while masturbating, it's Casper, a deceased child. What would that be classed as, pedonecrophilia? Even the most extreme sexual deviant must draw the line somewhere, surely?

But despite all these logistical and biological barriers, "the stranger" is well known, so presumably enough people have enjoyed doing it, or at least liked the idea of it, for it to endure. Which just goes to show that you can't tell people what they find arousing.

The subject of what is "acceptably" sexually stimulating or not has been raised in several ways of late, perhaps most obviously by the baffling success of the book Fifty Shades of Grey, which is, according to many reviews, a dreadfully written book made successful by virtue of being "erotic" and featuring "mainstream" (i.e. unrealistic) S&M. It is, as my female relatives inform me, "a dirty book".

But however purists/critics may complain and object to its portrayal of women, relationships, S&M etc., it seems quite obvious that significant numbers of people find it "stimulating", as it's supposedly all about the sex scenes, and has sold millions of copies. The only other explanation is that vast numbers of people are aroused by bad writing, which I hope isn't the case, as it would mean this blog would need an 18 certificate at the very least.

Whatever you think of the acts being performed by those involved, no law has been broken apart from, allegedly, that of supposedly witnessing said acts, which are supposedly "grossly offensive, disgusting or of an obscene character". These all strike me as largely subjective measures when it comes to sex, and that's a worrying basis on which to base a law which applies to everyone. But whatever the ins-and-outs (fnarr!) of the legislation, it can easily be interpreted as an attempt by those in authority to declare that being aroused by certain things is wrong.

But this is a ridiculous concept. Attempting to control what people are aroused by in this day and age is like trying to deflect an asteroid using the force of your own urine stream; if you're even in a position to attempt it, you've got no chance of succeeding, you're just going to end up looking ridiculous. People are incredibly complex psychological creatures, and sex is one hell of a motivator. The drive toward sex underpins so much of what we do in our adult lives, and is a cornerstone of our psychological make-up, according to some.

But maybe it's rash to say you can't control what people are aroused by. Studies of sexual and so-called "deviant" behaviours go back decades, with a lot of focus on how conditioning can affect them. In 1966, Rachman demonstrated inducing a sexual fetish in humans, by showing male volunteers pictures of female boots which were immediately followed by images of sexually arousing naked women. The subjects then experienced arousal when shown the boots alone. Essentially, they were given a shoe fetish in the name of science. Science is generous like that.

But it's not just a simple case of "X + sexy lady = X fetish"; conditioning is more complex, humans exponentially more so. The boots were also described as a "neutral stimulus", but is that the case? The 60s are often described as a time of sexual revolution, and sexy women in boots weren't exactly an alien concept. Is it possible the subjects already had a boots-sex association that the experiment simply enhanced?

And obviously it would be naive to suggest that simply showing a human some inert object coupled with something sexually stimulating means they automatically develop a sexual fetish for that object. If that were the case, these days we'd see thousands of people lusting over computer screens. And that's ridiculous … right?

Humans don't get to choose what they're sexually aroused by, despite what some fundamentalists may insist. How one person's development progresses to sexual maturity is impossible to predict with any accuracy, and is usually far beyond their control. Most people are seemingly hard-wired to be attracted to and sexually aroused by other humans in some form, although even that is not guaranteed. But the number of things that can shape a human's sexual preferences, from quirks of internal biology to one-off external experiences, is ridiculously vast.

To clarify, this isn't an argument in favour of all sexual activities being allowed at all times, or a defence of damaging sexually motivated action. Obviously there are some desires that are rightly not allowed as they cause harm to unwilling people. Just because you have a desire doesn't mean you should be allowed to act on it, for the same reason someone desiring a new TV doesn't mean they should be allowed to steal mine. But there's a difference between not acting on an impulse and not having it at all, and I feel it's an important distinction that's often overlooked

There's no universal baseline for acceptable sexual desire that I've encountered. One person's deviant behaviour is another's mundane activity. I'd wager there's no sexual activity that you could name that doesn't have someone who strongly objects to it. The commonly cited rule of thumb is "as long as nobody gets hurt", but even that is confusing when it comes to sex. What with it being an undeniably physical and anatomically invasive process, it obviously depends on what you mean by "hurt". And surely the "nobody gets hurt" rule misses the point of S&M altogether? But this is still a perfectly legal activity that consenting adults regularly indulge in.

The complexity of the human psyche and the pervasiveness of sex, both in our own heads and society in general, mean the spectrum of human sexual desires is far too varied and complex to be effectively regulated. And with the exception of laws that clearly prevent genuine harm coming to innocent people, why would you need to? Appealing to some ill-defined moral high ground is a spurious argument when you're trying to control people's private activities. Trying to restrict by law an act between consenting adults on the grounds that people who don't have to watch it would find it obscene isn't logical.

But then, this is a country where you're allowed to actually have sex before you can look at it. It's a bit much to insist that teenagers practise safe sex if they have to be blindfolded the whole time too.

In conclusion, human sexuality is a far more complex thing than any legislation can hope to accurately reflect. No doubt there are many things I've overlooked in this piece, or things that you'd say are flat out wrong. That's your prerogative. But that's the point: if the laws of society can't hope to effectively encompass the complexity of sexuality, I've got no chance of doing so in a single blog post.

And yes, this whole article was a result of me not wanting to waste the tortured pun/link-bait title once I'd thought of it.

Dean Burnett doesn't usually talk about other people's sexual preferences this much, as his Twitter account hopefully demonstrates: @garwboy